The recent announcement by PVUSD describing their long awaited counter proposal to PVFT was intentionally deceptive. The statement that “The District made this offer with the understanding that this Tentative Agreement would not close negotiations on Salary or the other Articles currently subject to negotiations” can be contrasted with the actual language of their proposal, “Workload and hours shall be amended as attached and implemented in the 2013-2014 school year.” Subsequent discussions during negotiations confirmed that they were not proposing to continue negotiations on this.

Furthermore, this article of the contract, that would no longer be open for negotiation, would in fact REDUCE TOTAL preparation time by either 60 minutes per week or 135 minutes per week, depending on the grade. This, too, was confirmed in subsequent discussions during negotiations. This level of deception is consistent with the misrepresentations regarding available school funding on which this inadequate proposal was based.

We also asked why first grade was chosen to be the sole beneficiary of class size reduction. They answered that the District had available classrooms next year only for the first grade despite the fact that PVFT told the Board, Human Resources and the District’s negotiating team, as early as January to begin planning for this infusion of money. By all accounts, our Board did not plan for the coming changes in California school funding and instead relied on the advice of their business office, who insisted on using outdated budget assumptions, to do nothing.

In response to the District’s “Press Release” to employees, PVFT has prepared “The Rest of the Story...” Non-italic, underlined print was added to the District’s “Press Release” and the portion dealing with CSEA was deleted.

 The district made an offer yesterday that even they recognized as inadequate. They describe it as a “first phase” and made it clear that they knew it wasn’t enough but they were willing to keep talking to us in the fall. They hoped that the actual state budget to be passed in a month would be more money for the District than they were willing to recognize now. But they were unwilling to negotiate any “what if” contingencies about this assured, significant revenue increase.

To summarize their offer: No retroactive pay raise this year and only a 4% raise next school year; they want to keep high class-sizes and caseloads in all but one grade level and they want even more time for mandated meetings! They urged us to accept this offer immediately even though they waited nine weeks to respond to our initial proposals, stating they couldn’t counter until they saw the State’s May Budget Revision. What makes this particularly puzzling is that they are NOT using this eagerly anticipated May Revise as the basis for their counter proposal!

The revenue forecast they did opt to use as justification for this poor offer is obsolete and does not reflect the passage of Prop 30, Measure L and the greatly increased school funding being debated in the Legislature.

We are prepared to offer a counter proposal and before concluding our meeting requested the District’s soonest available date. Their response was they did not have dates available at that time and would get back to us. We are still awaiting their call.

You can contact our office at 831-722-2331 with any questions. Click here to email school board members to let them know what you think. 

On a lighter note, we’re having our annual PVFT party this Friday, May 31th from 4-6 at Jalisco’s. Food, drinks and great people! Don’t miss it! Here’s the link to a flyer you can print and post all over the place! Click here for Directions